Friday, 5 June 2020

Attack On The Iron Coast 1968

This was the first in a series of war movies made by Oakmont productions in the late 1960s.
The film is loosely based on the St. Nazaire raid or Operation Chariot where an obsolete ship was filled with explosives in the bow and rammed into a German dry dock on the French coast during World War 2.

A previous film also loosely based on the same raid was The Gift Horse AKA Glory At Sea from 1952.

The miniature effects are handled by Les Bowie and are very effective with the dark night lighting certainly assisting with what would have been a relatively modest budget.

A shot of  bombers on a diversionary raid seen through binoculars was lifted from Dambusters 1955.















































































Friday, 3 January 2020

The Roaring Twenties 1939

This James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart prohibition era gangster film features a short model ship sequence. The shots depict a freighter being intercepted by a Coast Guard launch. There is also an establishing shot of a miniature lighthouse.

The miniatures were supervised by Byron Haskin who was the head of Warner Bros special effects dapartment at the time.

I found the entire film on Internet Archive.org.
Internet Archive Roaring Twenties 1939















Fear Is The Key 1972

From a book  and screenplay by Alistair MacLean comes this obscure thriller with some miniature submersible shots supervised by Derek Meddings.

The submersible is a strange boxy truck like design without the usual spherical or cylindrical hull shapes so prevalent in underwater craft.
There is also an underwater crashed Douglas Dakota wreck miniature environment.
The miniatures were shot at Bray Studios in England.

While the movie was originally widescreen as the letterboxing of the title and end credits show, this release has been cropped to the 3:4 aspect ratio for old school television.



























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